“Yes, I know him,” said the doctor.  “If he thinks he will be happier when he’s gone away, you must be happier too, Mrs. Sisson.  That’s all.  Don’t let him triumph over you by making you miserable.  You enjoy yourself as well.  You’re only a girl—–­”

But a tear came from his eye, and he blew his nose vigorously on a large white silk handkerchief, and began to polish his pince nez.  Then he turned, and they all bundled out of the room.

The doctor took his departure.  Mrs. Sisson went almost immediately upstairs, and Millicent shortly crept after her.  Then Aaron, who had stood motionless as if turned to a pillar of salt, went quietly down the passage and into the living room.  His face was very pale, ghastly-looking.  He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror over the mantel, as he passed, and felt weak, as if he were really a criminal.  But his heart did not relax, nevertheless.  So he hurried into the night, down the garden, climbed the fence into the field, and went away across the field in the rain, towards the highroad.

He felt sick in every fibre.  He almost hated the little handbag he carried, which held his flute and piccolo.  It seemed a burden just then—­a millstone round his neck.  He hated the scene he had left—­ and he hated the hard, inviolable heart that stuck unchanging in his own breast.

Coming to the high-road, he saw a tall, luminous tram-car roving along through the rain.  The trams ran across country from town to town.  He dared not board, because people knew him.  So he took a side road, and walked in a detour for two miles.  Then he came out on the high-road again and waited for a tram-car.  The rain blew on his face.  He waited a long time for the last car.

CHAPTER V

AT THE OPERA

A friend had given Josephine Ford a box at the opera for one evening; our story continues by night.  The box was large and important, near the stage.  Josephine and Julia were there, with Robert and Jim—­also two more men.  The women sat in the front of the box, conspicuously.  They were both poor, they were rather excited.  But they belonged to a set which looked on social triumphs as a downfall that one allows oneself.  The two men, Lilly and Struthers, were artists, the former literary, the latter a painter.  Lilly sat by Josephine in the front of the box:  he was her little lion of the evening.

Few women can sit in the front of a big box, on a crowded and full-swing opera night, without thrilling and dilating.  There is an intoxication in being thus thrust forward, conspicuous and enhanced, right in the eye of the vast crowd that lines the hollow shell of the auditorium.  Thus even Josephine and Julia leaned their elbows and poised their heads regally, looking condescendingly down upon the watchful world.  They were two poor women, having nothing to do with society.  Half bohemians.